The Labors of a Black Technician
by Raganarok
Summary: A day in the life of Rakshata. One shot.


The Labors of a black technician.

Rakshata walked up to the cockpit of her favourite child/Knightmare frame and sighed. She rested her hands on her hips as she took a deep drag on the pipe in her mouth, before assessing the damage. To her left, a grille leaked foul-smelling black smoke, and to her right several panels crackled and popped, spilling sparks. She stepped forward, avoiding dripping coolant fluid, to better see the half-melted wiring strewn across the front panel; even as she watched, one strand ignited. She blew out the flame, but when she leaned on the pilot seat it lurched and screeched.

"Dammit!"

* * *

Stretching, arms above her head, the Indian woman rolled her head backwards. Whatever Zero had tried pulling off this trip had fried the Yggdrasil Drive. Kallen barely managed to get the Guren back to the Ikurga. And once again, she was stuck doing repairs deep in the bowels of the ship.

She shoved the damp clumps of hair off of her forehead and squinted at the open panel. She'd been staring at the wires and lenses and circuit boards for so long that not only her eyes were aching but her head too. "One coffee break," she promised herself, "one short coffee break, then back to work."

She thought of the other three sections that she still had to go through, groaned, and thudded her head against the nearest wall.

Rakshata had twisted her hair back before she started repairs, but it was already pulling loose and brushing her shoulders. She ignored it, focusing on the wiring in front of her. Kallen had somehow popped a circuit somewhere that meant that the main computer was down, in the spirit of helpfulness, she had tried repairing it and only succeeded in taking out every single electrical system in the hangar bay.

As a result, Rakshata had spent the last two hours tracking down the exact junction that the two systems had connected at, and that was after spending four or five hours- she'd lost track- repairing the two separate systems.

Now she made sure that everything was set up for the final rewiring. She eased out the damaged connector and replaced it with a new one, then picked up the end of the (also brand-new) wire and twisted it into place on one side. Carefully, she started to fit the end of the other (newly installed) wire into the opposite side. If she didn't do this carefully, she would-

Electric blue arced across her vision as the shock threw her back against the wall. She snatched her burned, stinging fingers back from the ends of the wires that she still held as the competing smells of ozone and burning plasti-rubber scorched her nostrils. All around her lights flickered and then snapped off as the surge shorted them out, again.

Rakshata panted, staring accusingly at what was surely a mass of melted wiring and fused parts. She couldn't actually see it, as it was shrouded in the darkness that is only a batttleship without even emergency lights could produce, but she knew it was there. Tentatively, she reached up and touched her loose hair; it was standing out from her scalp at an unnatural angle, and abraded her sore fingertips.

"First Med deck. Then kill Kallen."

* * *

Her fingers had only just healed from the burns of over a week before. It had taken almost that long to get all the static out of her hair. Of course, it had been just long enough for Kallen and Zero to destroy something else. The two of them hadn't even made it through the next battle before they broke her children. Of course, they said that it had happened spontaneously, but listening to their description made her think that they'd tried pushing the Guren too hard- it was still touchy from the mass rewiring.

As a result of the strain, several systems had given up entirely, and in the process had derailed the programs and the pipes, conduits, and components. A lot of the systems had to be completely realigned, and some had to be repaired physically first. So now she was standing in front her priceless Knightmare frame, next to several unusable pipes, with stained coveralls and tender fingers, and about to attempt major surgery. By. Herself.

Rakshata was all for being a incredably brilliant Knightmare developer, who developed knightmaresthat other mere mortals could no even comprehend, let alone repair, but this was ridiculous.

She ignored the headache that was beginning to bloom behind her eyes and focused instead on making sure that she was working on the correct pipe. When she was positive, she started unfastening the connections that held that segment in place. As the last one came loose, she braced herself to jump back if it fell badly.

It didn't, at least at first. She'd shut off that pipeline, full as it was of lubricant, and let it drain off. Somehow, however, the draining off had not happened. The thick liquid started spraying out around both edges of the pipe section, covering the walls and the other pipes with green goo. Rakshata squinted, held a hand over her face, and tried to shore up the pipe with her elbow and tighten the fastener one-handed.

Instead the pipe shifted further, and a thick jet squirted out, catching her full in the face at the exact angle to get under her hand. She wiped it away, succeeding in tightening one fastener and starting on another. She might have managed from there if the Guren hadn't kicked on some obscure part of its brain just then and announced, in its normal monotone, "Reinitiating lubricant flow."

"No, oh no..." Rakshata pleaded frantically as she threw herself into tightening bolts, but the surge came too soon. She tried holding it in place, but the first blast of goo knocked it askew, pouring out onto her coveralls. Then, with an ominous creak, the beleaguered fasteners gave entirely.

She watched in a frozen sort of horror as the section of pipe fell and crashed into the pipes below. They'd been shut off, but not drained. The pipe in the middle began spouting runny purple coolant, a fountain of fluid that sprayed over her and dyed whatever wasn't green purple. She spun around, facing away, but the fire-suppression foam flared out before she was all the way around, coating hair and skin and coveralls, and the water splashed against her knees and leaked into her boots.

She covered her face, with what good that did after the lubricant and the coolant, and waited for the flow to ebb. When it finally did, she squelched through the hangar to the cutoff valves for each line, sighing when she got to the last one. Beka rested her head against the wall, leaving behind a smear of magenta, then trudged to her quarters aboard the Ikurga for a shower. When she saw herself in the mirror, she actually whimpered.

Then she got mad.

* * *

Ohgi didn't recognize the creature that stormed onto Command deck as Rakshata, at least until it started swearing at him in languages that he almost-but-not-quite recognized. Zero and Diethard looked similarly taken aback, while Tamaki blinked at the spectacle and Inoue just grinned. Unfazed by the reactions that she garnered, the Technicolor technichian kept cursing what Zero was pretty sure was his ancestry, abilities, and future descendents, and not just his, either, as she spat vitriol at everyone in shifting languages.

Zero interrupted. "Rakshata, as impressed as I am by your knowledge of obscenities in seven diffrent languages?"

"Nine, actually". Rakshata blinked; even her eyelashes were striped purple and green, with a magenta stripe or two that he was pretty sure was due to a reaction with the fire suppression foam still drying and dripping off her splotched coveralls.

She would have continued, but Zero cleared his throat. "As impressed as we all are, we would like to know why we're getting yelled at in Nine languages."

"I can imagine why," Diethard rumbled, leaning forward to stare intently at Rakshata.

"Because your superior intellect and senses can tell coolant and fire foam better than the average humans," Tamaki snarked, stepping forward to more closely examine the stuff coating Rakshata.

"That's exactly why," she spat, and he fell back involuntarily. "This is from me trying to repair the damage that you all did. Ive spent the last month rerouting circuits, and replacing pipes, and being electrocuted and sprayed with this," indicating, "and I haven't caused any of it!" Her voice rose into a roar, and when Zero tried interrupting again she steamrolled right over him.

"I put my baby back together, I fixed the Yggdrasil Drive, I rewired half the damn frame, and I just tried replacing all the pipes that you destroyed! The only one that helped at all was Tamaki, and he's the only one that didn't break it in the first place! I don't care why or how you did it, I don't care which of you did it. I'm tired of fixing every damn thing you guys break just 'cause I built it. I want you to repair my baby- all of you!"

Tamaki had warily moved behind her during her tirade, not wanting to be in front of her while she unleashed her temper. He noticed, out of the corner of his eye, Inoue and Diethard doing the same. He felt sorry for the other three, who really didn't know better and foolishly stayed in front of Rakshata.

"If I have to repair one more thing you broke, because of your boneheaded decisions and complete lack of mechanical anything, I'm taking over your quarters and you can spent the night- no, you can spend however long it takes to get my baby repaired- in a dark, dripping, rapidly rusting hangar!"

Zero seemed at a loss. "Well... I..."

"I don't believe that the 'breaking' of your baby was intentional," Ohgi informed her. Her head was tilted to the side, and he had a quizzical expression on his face.

And that really set Rakshata off.

* * *

Rakshats grinned as the coffee machine produced a stream of the greatest liquid known to the universe. The gurgling of pipes over her head, the faraway pulse of the engines going through a warm-up cycle... "Nothing like a running Knightmare frame." She patted the strut above her head.

"Rakshata," a new face the she didn't recognise came up to her looking hurt, "Iv'e finished the air circulation system."

She had a moment of bliss. "Good why do,'t you check the linkups to the main computer"

"Okay!" and she was gone.  
Rakshata smiled, relieved, and went toward the clanging that signified a newbie work team.

"Don't worry, you only have ten more pipes to go." Rakshata clapped one of them on the back before heading off. Up ahead, Zero was Standing impersouly in an alcove up a head, "Engoying you'e sla-, I maean assistants?"

"Don't know why we didn't do this before."

She left him laughing and headed back to her own coffee, stopping along.

"Oh, Rakshata?" he called, strideing to catch up to her. "I was wondering: 'boneheaded decisions'?"

"Oh... About that..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End.


End file.
